Sunday, June 23, 2013

It's A New Day Dawning...

     "Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most."

 As I sit here tonight this line just keeps repeating through my head. I saw it on a running website and it has somehow shaken everything up everything I do. Somehow it has made me question every decision, every word that comes out of my mouth, and it has left me feeling quite unsettled about many things.

I have questioned my definition of virtue. I have questioned what I want in a man. I have questioned my discipline in my finances, my discipline in my relationship with God. I have found myself wrestling with James 1:5-8, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." In the mud and confusion of what is right and what I really do or don't want I feel like the double minded man. The person who wants one thing and yet my actions don't follow through more than 50% of the time.

I don't want to be double minded, I don't want to "Know what is right and not do it" like it says in James 4:17. The man who knows what is right and doesn't do it, to him it is sin. If what is right is what comes from God (James 1:16-17 "Do not be deceived my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variance nor shadow of turning.") then that is what I want to pursue. Yet I keep finding myself distracted by the mediocre in the present instead of staying focused on the excellent in the future.

Right now I just continue to thank God for His brand new mercies every morning. Working on making decisions is a lot like running, the hardest step is the first, and it isn't the first on just the first day, but the first step every single day.